While the media is occupied with the sighting of some nekkid royal boobies, serious issues with far more obscene implications are being ignored. The Chicago teacher's strike is beginning a second week, with no resolution in sight; the Occupy Movement hits its first anniversary more than a little disheveled, with little fanfare and, sadly, few concrete results or concessions to the socio-economic reforms it has sought; and Americans are about to face a further onslaught of pointless campaign attacks from Camp Mittens before the GOP clown act packs up its big shoes and foam rubber noses and heads home.
But the real crisis is occurring overseas, in the continuing violent protests over this anti-Islam Youtube video that has gone viral in the most sinister sense of the word and fueled anti-West mob violence throughout the Muslim world. The NY Times has the story, reporting from Kabul:
"Hundreds of Afghans burned tires and pelted police officers and buildings with stones along a thoroughfare leading east out of Kabul on Monday, at one point nearing the high walls of a large American military base, in the first significant escalation of violence in Afghanistan over an anti-Islam film that has inflamed mobs in other parts of the Muslim world."The outburst followed demonstrations and violence in more than 20 countries since last Tuesday, when the American ambassador in Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, was killed in an attack on the United States diplomatic mission in Benghazi as protests spread from neighboring Egypt.
"In Indonesia, news reports said, police firing tear-gas and water cannons on Monday moved against hundreds of demonstrators who gathered outside the American Embassy in Jakarta to express opposition to the film, which many Muslims regard as blasphemous toward the Prophet Muhammad. Some protesters set fire to an American flag, while others hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails and burned tires.
"The police in Karachi, Pakistan, were pelted by rocks and fired in the air to turn back a convoy of protesters in cars and on motorcycles from the American Consulate, according to Reuters. Near the American Consulate in Lahore, protesters threw rocks and burned an American flag, the news agency said, and in Islamabad, the American Embassy said it had halted public services.
"In southern Beirut, Lebanon, thousands answered a call by Hezbollah to protest peacefully. They chanted 'Death to America, death to Israel' and 'America, hear us -- don't insult our Prophet,' Reuters said.
"In Afghanistan on Monday, as in other parts of the world, most of the protesters were young men, who chanted for the death of America, Israel, Britain and President Hamid Karzai's government.
"The police here responded in force to quell the rioting. Scores of regular officers and riot police officers wearing helmets and protected by shields battled groups of young men throughout the morning, trying to keep the demonstrators from moving toward the center of Kabul.
"There had been some protests in eastern Afghanistan on Friday over the video, with demonstrators burning an effigy of President Obama. But the protests on Monday were far more violent."
These are the kind of fires that you can't extinguish with a drone strike; and these Muslims aren't just upset about this single video. This is the result of US foreign policy that has directly or indirectly lead to the displacement and death of these innocent people for decades. There only surprise here is that it hasn't happened sooner.
